Posts Tagged ‘HIV’

The number of new HIV infections in a rural Indiana county has grown, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The institute is working with state health leaders to control the “severe outbreak,” which has spread among users of a prescription opioid called Opana.

The outbreak has been ongoing since mid-December. As of Friday, 142 people have tested positive for HIV, with 136 confirmed cases and six more with preliminary positive test results, all in rural Scott and Jackson counties. This is a huge number of cases for an area that has a population of only a few thousand people.

The CDC and state health leaders held a news conference Friday to talk about the new numbers and about the growing threat of the spread of disease from IV drug use, especially in isolated rural areas that have sparse health resources.

Scott County, the epicenter of the outbreak, has only one doctor who deals with infectious disease, but the doctor is not an HIV specialist, the State Department of Health said. Since the rampant HIV outbreak was first noticed in mid-December, the state has tried to flood the area with additional resources. Indiana declared a public health emergency in that county in March.

Indiana University has sent health volunteers to provide a clinic, open once a week to help treat people and test them for HIV. These workers are also going door to door to try to educate the population about the danger of sharing needles.

So far, 33 patients have visited the temporary clinic, which is starting to see patients return to seek treatment.

HOUSTON — David Richard Wilson, 33, was found guilty of the sexual assault of a child in 2005 and sentenced to four years in prison. Six years later, Wilson was back in court, accused in two new cases that, if proven, may have lifelong consequences for two more children.

Wilson is charged with super aggravated sexual assault of a child. The enhanced charge is because of the age of the alleged victim. She was only 23 months old at the time. We have also been told that the child is Wilson’s niece.

A court document states that the alleged assault occurred last year. The toddler’s parents are said to have lived out of state, had drug problems, and sent their daughter to live with family in Houston. The child is the daughter of Wilson’s sister.

Last November, the toddler was taken to a doctor, where she was diagnosed with HIV, genital herpes and chlamydia. Reconstructive surgery was performed because of infection to her private parts. A doctor told investigators that she had to have been sexually abused because of the sexually transmitted diseases that were detected.

Four people in the home where the child lived were tested. Only one, the affidavit states, tested positive for HIV. It was David R Wilson. It’s unclear why Wilson was not arrested at the time.

Last month, a 14-year-old girl spoke to the Children’s Assessment Center, telling a caseworker she had been having sex with a man for two years. She identified the man as David R Wilson and said she was pregnant. An exam of the girl showed that she was HIV positive, had herpes and chlamydia.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are giving $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help fight the Ebola epidemic.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said the viral outbreak is “at a critical turning point.”

“It has infected 8,400 people so far, but it is spreading very quickly and projections suggest it could infect 1 million people or more over the next several months if not addressed,” he wrote. “We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long-term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio.

“We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome,” he continued. “Grants like this directly help the front-line responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more.”

The donation will go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response effort in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and in other spots in the world where Ebola is a threat, the foundation said Tuesday.

Zuckerberg and Chan are making the grant from their fund at the non-profit Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

In 2013, Zuckerberg and Chan set a record for charitable donations by giving Facebook shares worth nearly $1 billion to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

A year earlier, he and Chan gave the same number of shares, then worth about $500 million, to the foundation.

Zuckerberg has a net worth of about $29.7 billion. He has pledged to donate at least half his wealth to philanthropic causes.

In 2013 he was the largest donor to charity.

But his is not the largest donation from a tech titan to fight Ebola. Last month, Bill Gates’s foundation pledged $50 million to fight the epidemic in West Africa.

Zuckerberg and Chan recently gave $120 million to Bay Area schools. In 2010, Zuckerberg donated $100 million to New Jersey schools.

Chan, a graduate from UCSF medical school, is currently a pediatric resident.

John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.

Carnahan said Tuesday he is calling for a investigation into the issue and has sent a letter to President Obama about it.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri. “No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great nation should have to worry about their personal safety when receiving much needed healthcare services from a Veterans Administration hospital.”

Dr. Gina Michael, the association chief of staff at the hospital, told the affiliate that some dental technicians broke protocol by handwashing tools before putting them in cleaning machines.

The instruments were supposed to only be put in the cleaning machines, Michael said.

The handwashing started in February 2009 and went on until March of this year, the hospital told KSDK.

The hospital has set up a special clinic and education centers to help patients who may have been infected. However, Carnahan said he feels more should be done and those responsible should be disciplined.

“I can only imagine the horror and anger our veterans must be feeling after receiving this letter,” Carnahan said. “They have every right to be angry. So am I.”

This is not the first time this year a hospital has been in hot water for not following proper procedures.

In June, Palomar Hospital in San Diego, California, has sent certified letters to 3,400 patients who underwent colonoscopy and other similar procedures, informing the patients that there may be a potential of infection from items used and reused in the procedures.

An alleged serial rapist, who reportedly mocked one victim by saying he gave her the sexually transmitted disease HIV, is off the streets of Philadelphia.

Ian Gabriel, 23, has been linked to four alleged assaults over the past three years, police say. He was arrested on July 9 after police say he raped a juvenile at an Oxford Circle barber shop, where he was employed part-time, two days before.

Following his arrest, Special Victims Unit detectives ran Gabriel’s DNA through a database where it was a match for two rapes in 2012, officials said. The first happened on Feb. 15, 2012 in the Kensington section of the city. Then, about six months later in nearby Frankford, police say Gabriel struck again.

Craig Lamar Davis, the defendant in question, was a married minister at Bishop Paul Morton’s Clayton county church when he had affairs with members of his congregation. He now faces two felony charges of ‘Reckless HIV,’ that could land him 20 years in prison after being accused of knowingly exposing at least 2 women to HIV.

Davis was once tested for HIV and came up positive, however his defense to the criminal accusations is almost laughable. His defense challenges the validity of HIV tests and says prosecutors will not be able to prove he is HIV positive or that he even had sex with those women.

Philip Burns (pictured), a former elementary school teacher of the year who was arrested last November, was recently indicted for child molestation, according to prosecutors. A five-count indictment filed Wednesday charged the HIV-positive Burns with child molestation, aggravated child molestation, reckless conduct, child enticement and criminal solicitation, according to WALB News 10.

Memphis minister Rodney Carr (pictured), who was arrested last year and charged with criminal exposure to HIV for knowingly infecting a woman, was recently spotted on a popular Black dating website, BlackPeopleMeet, looking to hook up with a potential mate.

Pastor Rodney Carr, 47, tested positive for HIV in 2005, but after dating a MARRIED woman in 2010 and 2011, he reportedly infected her with the virus since he didn’t divulge information about his sexual health to her. The woman found out she had HIV when she went for a routine visit to her gynecologist. According to NewsOne, she said that she trusted Pastor Carr and didn’t think he would do such a thing because he is a minister…despite the fact that he was already living foul by having an affair with her.
Although Carr isn’t in jail and is free to try to mack online, he’s still being prosecuted for his crime. At a recent court appearance, he claimed that he didn’t knowingly try to infect the married woman, but if he’s found guilty he could at the least face a $500 fine, and at the most, face two years in prison.